[lusus_naturae]

I am not sure what to think, it could be that birds that are better problem-solvers are better at vocal mimicry. The study is for some reason focusing on vocal skills and problem-solving, both of which are part of executive functions. I am unsure that something which has complex language skills would necessarily be good at problem-solving, or vice versa. Mice are great at problem-solving, but they don't have much in the way of vocal abilities. Both language control and problem-solving are related to cognitive flexibility, in some respects. That is, I think that the emergence of cognitive flexibility helps birds (and other species) with vocal mimicry and problem-solving. For example, I don't chatgpt has any cognitive flexibility based on its language and problem-solving skills.

[drekk]

Mice do have pretty complex multisyllabic vocalizations, it's just that the majority fall outside of our auditory range. It's the same for rabbits. They've even found that mice sing in different contexts (some courtship related, some not) https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnbeh.2015.0007...

In humans at least we know that if an individual doesn't pick up a language as a child they will not be fully able to as an adult, and will have cognitive disabilities as a result. A modern example we had to read about in my neuroscience undergraduate program was Genie. When rescued from an abusive upbringing she was able to learn some nonverbal communication over the span of months, but missing that critical development period in childhood had lifelong impacts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genie_(feral_child)

[lusus_naturae]

That's fair, and interesting. I don't think it takes away from the fact that cognitive flexibility is still the overarching emergent property that enables this.